I’ve been taking a little bit of a hiatus from this blog over the past couple of days.  We’re nearing the end game with the book and it’ll be soon enough when I have to sell The Devil in the Red Dress all over town and beyond.  There’s been a bit of a hiatus personally too so I’m dealing with that but I’ve been reading up on line.

One piece of excellent advice I read from was Moonrat, at her blog Editorial Ass. With a book so close to publication it’s hard not to start thinking about cold hard figures and with the global economic situation, well it’s enough to give a first time author a bit of a wobble.

So I’ve decided to take Moonrat’s excellent advice tomorrow and I’m going book shopping tomorrow.  Well for purely selfish reasons it makes excellent sense.  Bit apart from that, book shopping is something I love to do.  There’s nothing like the smell of new books or the sound of the pages opening for the first time or the feel of a lovely new somewhat silky paperback cover ready to be opened.

When I was a kid one of my favourite places was a second hand shop in my home town of Wimbledon.  Quite apart from the fact that they had the most amazing collection of vintage clothing from anywhere from the 1890s to the 1950s, my favourite part of the shop was the basement, where they kept the books, the whole place smelt of old paperbacks.

I grew up making sure all my coats and jackets had book sized pockets so I could always have with me whatever I was reading.

Now I write myself, I have an ever growing pile by the bed. It takes me for ever to get round to reading something but one day I will. I still get excited when I find a new book that I really want to read and buy it.  Then I go off about my business and there’s this familiar weight in it’s little paper bag.

Anyway, I’m going to rediscover the pleasure of buying books tomorrow. I have a feeling they’re going to feature highly on our Christmas list this year.  Maybe I’ll even get the chance to fit in some reading as well…